The Circus

I don’t remember exactly how I began working at the circus,
but by my seventh year, I was ready to quit.
The job was going nowhere. I started out training lions,
and was demoted to cleaning elephant shit.
Elephant shit isn’t as messy as you might think.
Still, it can get monotonous. The rain fell hard that Christmas Eve.
I walked into the boss’s office without knocking,
“I quit,” I said, “I’ve had enough.” He took off his hat,
and looked up at me, “Who are you?” he said.

José Hernández Díaz holds degrees in English and creative writing from the University of California, Berkeley, and Antioch University Los Angeles. His poetry and prose poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Gigantic Sequins, Green Mountains Review, Huizache, Los Angeles Review, Lumina, New Delta Review, Parcel, Pleiades, The Progressive, Whiskey Island, and other journals. He has served as an editor for Floricanto Press and Lunch Ticket.